Sunday, 30 August 2015

As Lebanon crumbles Israel must prepare to defend itself from a new border along the Litani River

Violent Arab 'culture' played out in this long forgotten massacre of 1929, one amongst many pogroms against Jews in Arab countries. Arab violence is now devouring its own. Israel must not allow its bloodthirsty Islam inspired enemies to advance again onto its borders

While Arabs have complained that Israel was aggressive and expansionist from the day of its Independence (a projection that applied to Israel's Arab neighbors rather than itself), the time is coming when Israel is going to have to begin to re-take borders that the Bible prescribed for the Jewish Nation.

In the Torah (Bible) it says:

Genesis 15:18

" the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your
descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great
river, the River Euphrates…"

In the thousand or so years of the existence of the ancient kingdom of Israel the borders expanded and contracted with the fortunes of the wars forced upon its people.

Israel has been under great pressure from the USA, Europe and Islamic nations to shrink its already tiny borders on the way to its total annihilation. The present Obama Administration with its goal of Iranian hegemony over the Middle East would be only too happy for Israel to disappear the sooner the better. With that in mind, Iran's constant calls for the destruction of Israel and Obama's nuclear surrender to Iran make sense. Within the next decade we may see an Iranian attempt to launch nuclear tipped missiles at Israel.

Not for nothing did Rabbi Riskin compare Obama to Haman, Israel's ancient Persion foe who tried to destroy the Jewish People.

Reducing Israel's borders are forever on the world's agenda supposedly for peace and security of all nations in the region including Israel, but in reality the opposite is true, Israel only finds peace when it is strong and has a strong deterrent posture. After 1967 the USA sent a professional military mission to determine Israel's minimum territorial defense needs. It was agreed that Israel needed to keep everything it had taken in the war forced upon it by the Arab states. Giving away the Sinai to a less than friendly Egypt which has no historical claim to the land was a blunder by Begin that will at a future date need to be rectified.

For Israel to be safe it needs to move with the times, to realize that the era of Arab nations is coming to an end and that in order to protect itself from the Islamic anarchy, or even worse, the Caliphate, Israel will have to expand when necessary to new secure borders.

Israel's present borders in the Golan Heights fronting what used to be Syria are relatively strong and defensible so apart from making sure that friendly or at least quiescent forces are encamped on the other side of the border, there is little need for change there for the present although the following should be noted:

It is interesting to note that Israel has already violated the basic strictures of the top US military brass by:
— Returning to Syrian control in 1974 all of the strategic high ground
on the Golan Heights, running in a north-south direction from Kuneitra.

Israel's border with Lebanon is in places such as the hills around Metullah defensible but in the West the Iranian proxy Hezbollah could invade at a time of its choosing. Israel has admitted that at least in the beginning of any hostilities it will have to reckon with Hezbollah capturing Jewish border communities. That would of course be a disaster for Israel which unlike with its enemies, values every Jewish life.

Thankfully Hezbollah is otherwise engaged in defending its positions in the Beqa valley and the Qalamoun mountains with the estimated loss so far of around 2,000 of its fighters. For a force estimated to be no larger than 10,000 fighters this is indeed shocking. Whereas once Hezbollah refrained from using child soldiers, children of 15 and possibly even younger are known to have been killed fighting for the terrorist group.

Hezbollah has picked a fight in Syria that it can not win but the blame should not be placed on its nominal head Nasrallah but Ayatollah Khameini in Iran. Hezbollah does Iran's bidding and Lebanon is going to pay the price.
The civil war is on its way in Lebanon and ISIS and friends are knocking steadily on the door.

Hezbollah will eventually fall and Lebanon will empty of its people just as Syria and Iraq are in the process of doing. If Israel does not step in to occupy the vacated lands it will find new foes just as radical as Iran on its northern border.

With the shia enemy defeated, the sunni jihadists pouring out of Syria into Lebanon will be looking for the next stage in their Jihad, the conquering of Israel. Israel will need to advance up to the Litani river at a minimum to preempt this and establish settlements to enable the new borders to be held. Where there are no settlements there is no security and the military needs to be much larger in order to police the borders.

The IDF sorely missed its Gush Katif settlements in the last war with Hamas in 2014 making its entry into Gaza that much more dangerous and costly. Ditto with Lebanon in the years 1982-2000.
As Lebanon crumbles Israel must ready itself to protect its northern border by advancing into the vacuum before it is filled and becomes a new and even more deadly threat than Hezbollah.